Well, since I can’t possibly post ALL the pics from Flickr to LJ (like I could not post all the photos/videos from my laptop to Flickr or YouTube)…I am done with the wildlife of Tanzania…but I would like to close with a few images of the towns and the sights….here are images from Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Manyara.

DAR ES SALAAM

As we came in to land, I took this snap of the beauty of the sea along the coast:

And there was the city of Dar-es-Salaam,filling my window:

We landed at the Julius Nyerere International Airport: And here's the facade: The front porch is supported by pillars and roofing which give the feel of palm trees with their fronds: Can you see the likeness? I got a glimpse of Swahili at the airport; this shop, a pharmacy, has the words "Duka" for shop (Dukaan is Hindi for shop) and "Dawa" for medicine (the same word in Hindi).... I found this extremely gory rendtion of the dangers of tobacco (Tambaku is exactly the same word for tobacco in Hindi, too!) Yeugh, I don't know about smoking, but it made me want to stop looking! As we drove in, I saw this forking way with the building, very similar in style to our architecture here: We visited one of the several Hindu temples in the city, which are all in the same area.... And here's a pic of the deities there: And true to our practice of combining religion and faith with moral issues, there was this homily at the temple: This temple doesn't believe that a small drink a day is good for you!..and how ironic, that "illiteracy" should be spelt that way...maybe they are against not having lists? or being listless? ;-)) Shops often have soldered iron grilles to protect their windows,...perhaps robbery is common? I couldn't find out. These are the equivalent of the rolling shutters we have... We visited the Seacliff Hotel, on the seafront (which is mostly fisherfolk's homes) and I was impressed by the thatched roof, which was much more eco-friendly than concrete and cement: Here's another view of one of their buildings: I liked the use of the wooden logs, to give a safari-lodge effect. As I said, our hosts didn't like us to walk very far afield in Dar, and so we didn't really see too much. I did go to see a jewellery shop which was selling Tanzanite, the precious stone that is almost as expensive as diamonds are; but they didn't allow photography, and we had to undergo fairly stringent security measures to go into the shop! ZANZIBAR, alas, we only got this shot of the airport from the aircraft, in the harsh late afternoon sunshine: Zanzibar used to be part of Oman before merging with Tanganyka to become Tanzania... ARUSHA Arusha, a small town that we passed on the way from Kilimanjaro to our safari destinations, (and of course, once again on the way back) had an airport not much bigger than Manyara's: The Cultural Heritage Centre is a building made to look like the traditional drum, spear, and shield of the Masai: And here's the entrance, built to look like tusks! I was intrigued by this building below...wish we had the time to check it out! Arusha, Nairobi, Dodoma...names that have such a "foreign", exotic tang! Here are the signs on the road... Nairobi, of course, is in Kenya. The highway went all the way to Cape Town... MANYARA When we came into Manyara, and passed this important outpost of human civilization: Imagine, a police outpost board with a Coke ad...reminded me of that wonderful movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy". We passed the entrance to the Lake Manyara National Park (we would come back after settling into our hotel) with the warning sign, too, in both English and Swahili: We saw this new hotel being built, it was nice that the local idiom was being used and a thatched roof incorporated, rather than glass and concrete: And this was the hotel gateway: We then passed Manyara airport, which is a cute little field with one windsock streaming in tbe breeze (and probably two little buildings, marked HIM and HER..!) And here's the runway... When one watches the little Cessnas and Cherokees flying over the savannah, one really feels that one is back in the times of "Hatari", the 60's wildlife movie that was shot in Africa! This is on display at the Lake Manyara Visitors' Centre. Here's our hotel,the Serena Hotel (the chain is owned by the Aga Khan) perched on the edge of the Rift Valley ridge, overlooking the Lake Manyara Park: The cottages are built in a local idiom: We were impressed that Serena Lodges was involved with a lot of local activities, such as education, and working towards a solution to the water problem in the area: Here's the Central Masai Market in Manyara:

And beyond the town were the traditional Masai houses, too:

Those are my impressions of the towns of this African country…to an amazing extent, it felt as if we were back home in India, and especially in Karnataka…Tanzania, to my mind, is not all that different from India….except that there doesn’t seem to be much manufacturing or other industries (except mining) there. The unit of currency is the Tanzanian shilling, though the dollar is practically a second one.

Hope you enjoyed that whirlwind tour!